


phone calls at night

by joonyoungs



Category: The Boyz (Korea Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Happy Ending, Homesickness, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:28:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26249452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joonyoungs/pseuds/joonyoungs
Summary: "I miss home," Kevin says, and Jacob can hear the implications of the words— I miss laughing with my friends in the snow, I miss hearing my mother's voice as she sings in the kitchen, I miss the person I used to be before I was here.Jacob thinks he knows exactly what Kevin means.
Relationships: Bae Joonyoung | Jacob/Moon Hyungseo | Kevin
Comments: 13
Kudos: 123





	phone calls at night

**Author's Note:**

> well, this happened   
>  I think I see a lot of myself in Kevin, and when he talks about mental health issues and insecurity I get it. Is this me projecting a little bit? who knows. But I think Kevin deserves some extra love right now, and Jacob is the perfect person to give it to him.   
>  unbeta'd

Living in a country you were not born into feels a little bit like walking through a dream. Jacob keeps wanting to wake up in his modest home back in Toronto, laying in his childhood bedroom and listening to the sound of his brother playing music from his room and his parents cooking Saturday morning breakfast downstairs. 

He misses snow, not that they don't get it in South Korea, but real Canadian snow. The kind of weather that makes you feel like no amount of layers are enough, no heat packs shoved into boots or pockets would be successful in warding off the cold that seeps into your bones.

Only Kevin knows what it's like, knows what it means to wonder if you'll ever get a chance to go back.

They had talked about it countless times before, trading stories and laughing at customs that differed between the major cities. Jacob saw the way Kevin's eyes lit up when his parents expedited over snacks from his childhood, colorful packaging and salty flavors working as a balm to smooth over the aches of missing home just a little bit. 

Jacob has seen more sides to Kevin than anyone else here. He remembers the night when they packed into Jacob's room, countless blankets and snacks under their arms before Kevin sat down to work the computer. It wasn't until forty minutes later, when Kevin puts on the hockey game they had been looking forward to for weeks, that he sees it. The familiarity of the announcer's voice making Kevin's features crumble, the sudden homesickness racking his body and making him cry into Jacob's arms.

He recalls a time, post dance practice when most of them were still dancing and laughing away in the large studio, that Jacob sat on the floor in the hallway. Back to the wall, phone to his ear, he listened to his brother tell him about moving to Los Angeles. A string of _congratulations_ and _I love you_ 's left Jacob's lips, but by the time he had hung up the phone the familiar monster of grief was making a home in his chest and threatening to crawl out of his throat.

He had missed too many milestones, been away for too many moments where he should have been there. Jacob had rested his head against the wall, squeezing his eyes shut as to not let the tears fall.

It had been Kevin's arms to wrap around him then, slipping out of practice and seeing him on the floor. A sort of silent arrangement, an exchange of comfort for understanding. 

There were countless other times, memories blending together in a cycle of pain and comfort, that Jacob struggles to make out as he squints through the fog in his mind. There is only one consistency, one member with the voice that sounded like home and the kind of country kinship that made them their other halves before they even knew what the implications of those words meant. 

Kevin had been a lot of things over the short course of Jacob's life that he has had him. He is his best friend, the only one that understands the way his eyes sometimes look like they're focusing on something far away. He is the person that holds his hand and kisses comfort into his skin and the person that Jacob thinks that maybe, someday, he could tell Kevin he loves him and have him understand exactly what it means. 

Understanding is a language all their own, evident in the way Jacob slips into Kevin's room and sees the look on his face. A quiet nod and a quick text to let Changmin and Sunwoo know to find another place to sleep tonight. 

By the time he sets his phone down on Kevin's desk, Jacob can see the way Kevin looks up at the ceiling with his hands sinking back into the mattress. Long legs hanging over the edge of the bed, socked feet against the floor. He looks vulnerable in a way Jacob doesn't have words for.

"I miss my mom, dude," Kevin says, still looking up like he's tracing the sketches he's hung up on the walls with his eyes. He blinks heavy, letting his body curl into himself just a little. It is only then that he looks at Jacob, holds a silent hand out. 

Jacob knows what he wants, walks forward enough and helps Kevin wrap his arm around his waist. Kevin's hand finds the underneath of Jacob's shirt, tracing patterns and words into his skin. Jacob closes his eyes in the low light of the room and swears he feels an _I love you_ written between the notches of his spine.

"I know," Jacob whispers, hands coming up to rest on Kevin's shoulders. He can never sit still with Kevin, reaching out to play with the longer hairs that brush against the back of his neck. "She misses you, too."

Jacob looks up at the small window above Kevin's bed, looks at the way the rain runs down the glass against the black velvet sky. Jacob thinks about his days as a child, when he would watch two droplets slide to the bottom of the window and pretended they were racing. He wonders if Kevin ever had those thoughts as a boy, finds himself wishing he knew Kevin growing up.

"I miss home," Kevin says, and Jacob can hear the implications of the words— I miss laughing with my friends in the snow, I miss hearing my mother's voice as she sings in the kitchen, I miss the person I used to be before I was here.

Jacob thinks he knows exactly what Kevin means.

"Lay down," he whispers, and Kevin lets his body curl up beneath the covers. It's almost as if Kevin brings the sensation of touch to Jacob, because he doesn't feel himself kicking off his shoes, doesn't feel his bare feet on the hardwood floor, but he feels the way Kevin's fingers grip his shirt and pull him beneath the sheets with him. 

Kevin rests his head against Jacob's chest, tucked beneath his chin and listening to his heart like it's better than any music he could play for himself. Jacob wraps his arms around him, feels himself rubbing circles into Kevin's back as he shifts to get comfortable again.

Neither of them speak for a while, until suddenly they can't get the words out fast enough. Kevin tells Jacob about the time he locked himself out of the house at fifteen and having to break into his own bedroom during the worst snowfall Vancouver had seen in years. 

Jacob can picture it. Bright eyes and boxy smile, a rock in his hand carefully angled before Kevin hurls it towards the window over his bed. The sound of his sister yelling in shock. The bright yellow glow of the porch light against the snowbanks. All of it in crystal clear quality in Jacob's mind, all the way down to the nervous laughter and gentle swearing leaving Kevin's lips.

He tells Jacob other things, too. Quieter things. About sleepless nights wondering what he would do with the future ahead of him that seemed so uncertain. About the fear that creeps into the marrow of his bones and leaves him shaking on the floor of his room.

"Those days were long," Kevin whispers, then corrects himself. "Loud."

Jacob threads his fingers through Kevin's hair, pulls his body close so he can kiss the top of his head. "Was it?"

Outside the rain is falling. Inside, nobody speaks for some time. 

Kevin's voice breaks first, like pulling the blanket away from the bed. "It's one of those times." An arm wraps around Jacob's waist, pulls him so close he wonders if one of them will crack. "Where I wish I had someone to call. To tell them about all those things."

The streetlights through the windows above the bed are barely visible, the haze of the storm cutting through their beams.

"But nobody's gonna answer, you know?" Kevin asks, and he laughs a little. It is without humor but it's some form of release, and Jacob holds him through it. "And even if they did, I probably wouldn't have anything to say."

Minds work in strange ways, and Jacob is all too familiar with gripping a phone to your ear and not being able to get the words out. Of sitting on the floor, shaking and chilled, hearing the feedback of your own breathing static against the receiver. 

Jacob tucks Kevin closer, his lips finding his bare shoulder as he adjusts to their same height. 

It's as if they're both listening to the rain, the sounds of the storm pulling them both into a comfortable silence. Jacob feels like his voice is pushing through curtains, trying to find its way out of the thickness of it all. Eventually it does.

"My brother got a car when I was fourteen," Jacob says, lips so close to Kevin's shoulder he can taste the salt of his skin. "He hid the keys under one of the couch cushions so nobody would borrow it."

Kevin hums, turning his face away from the rain. His profile illuminated by even the lowest light is beautiful, Jacob decides.

"When things got bad, I'd take the keys and just sit in the car," Jacob explains, hand reaching up to brush away the hair from Kevin's face. "I'd sit there with my phone, in the backseat, but I never did anything. Never called anyone."

"Never?" Kevin asks, and his voice sounds so far away. Jacob wants to pull it closer, wants to wrap it around his body like it's the only warmth he's even known.

Jacob shakes his head, feels his cheek brush against the pillow. His hand trails down from Kevin's hair, cupping his jaw like a treasure. "I think if we knew each other then, I'd call you. Even if you didn't have anything to say."

Kevin's face shifts between several emotions, only three of which Jacob has a name for, before landing on something that makes him look like he wants to cry. "Yeah?" he asks, his voice sounding underwater.

Jacob hums, pulls Kevin forward to ghost a kiss against his forehead. "And if you called me, I'd pick up every time."

A noise escaped Kevin's throat, involuntarily, something between a laugh and a sob. His fingers knot into the back of Jacob's shirt as he presses his face into the crook of his neck. Jacob feels like he's slowly being pulled beneath the undertow, but it isn't unwelcome.

There is no thrashing beneath waves this time, no fighting a bitter cold. It is warm, it is the comforting anchor of Kevin's arms around his waist as they drift off to sleep.

"I wish I knew you back home," Kevin says, after the tears leave his eyes and his voice is hoarse from the memory of it. "I wish we had grown up together."

"Me too," Jacob says, and he finds he hears his own implications the second it leaves his lips— I would have helped you, I would have fought like hell to bring us to the same coastline, I would have told you I loved you sooner. 

Kevin must know exactly what Jacob means, because he looks up, eyes wide like he's taking in the world all at once, before wrapping his hand around the back of Jacob's neck.

He pulls them together, stopping a centimeter before their lips slot together. A silent ask for consent, one that Jacob melts eagerly into. The kiss is a lifetime of phone calls at night, of love across coasts, of the wish that maybe in this life they have time to get it right. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


They wake to a gentler morning, limbs tangled and only the memory of a storm. When Kevin smiles at Jacob through the filtered sunshine fighting to be seen through the clouds, it feels better than the first snowfall back home, his bare feet running against cold floors for a chance to look out the window. Kevin's hand against the warmth of Jacob's back is the conversation on Jacob's front porch, one they would have every night of summer until the sunset looked like home in Kevin's eyes. Kevin's lips against Jacob's own is the springtime confession, when the snow has melted between their feet and they have both accepted this is a hometown love in the most fated of ways. 

When Kevin's says _I love you_ , this time, Jacob wants to tell him he'll buy him a plane ticket, pack everything they own and fly across oceans so Kevin will never have to feel like this again.

Instead he tells him _I love you, too._

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes you feel a lot of things and you write a whole fic on your phone and post it at 3am. That's fine.   
>  I would greatly appreciate any kudos, comments, or fic requests you want to sent into the void (my curious cat) ♡
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/realkevmoon) / [curious cat](https://curiouscat.me/realkevmoon)


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